Shawntel Palazzo couldn’t resist the plea she saw on Facebook to rescue four Amish work horses in Pennsylvania before they could be sent to a kill farm in Mexico.

“When I saw that they needed help, and it was on a time crunch, we decided to go save them,” said Palazzo, who owns the family-run Palazzo Stables in Deerfield.

Alongside three members of her team, she packed a trailer with halters, lead ropes, hay, water, bandages and other first aid supplies before setting out at 5 a.m. for what would become a 17-hour round trip to Pennsylvania and back.

Upon arriving at the hand-off site near the New Holland auction, they discovered that the four horses had been living in their own manure without much food or water.

“They were so willing to hop onto our trailer, not knowing where the destination was,” said lesson instructor Taryn Poisson.

Two of the horses were in poor condition. One in particular, now named Minnie, had ribs protruding from underneath her skin and a combination of bite, kick, or whip marks across her body. Palazzo and her team fought tears the entire drive back.

“I just can’t imagine what other horses have to go through, the ones that we haven’t saved,” said Savannah Wilkinson, who works with the youngest children at the stables.

Pulling into the Deerfield stables around 10 p.m. the same day they left, the team unloaded the horses into a back pen, where they needed to stay in quarantine before they could be introduced to the other 16 horses living on the farm. The staff brought out food and water and then covered each animal – still hesitant at human contact – with a blanket.

“They deserve another chance too,” Palazzo said.

Two weeks after the rescue mission, the horses – named Minnie, Boogie, Zoey, and Sweet Pea with the help of Palazzo’s six-year-old daughter, Addie – have shown steady signs of improvement. They no longer balk when people approach and will even walk up to Palazzo, Poisson, and Wilkinson to nuzzle their shoulders or eat hay out of their hands. When they first arrived, none of the animals appeared to have ever enjoyed treats such as carrots or apples.

“None of us know their pasts, so we all have to handle them with care and really just try to get to know their personalities, to try to figure out their past from there and how to go about healing them,” Poisson said.

The team estimates each animal is between 10 to 15 years old. They will know more information once the horses’ quarantine period ends and they can undergo medical assessment.

“We want to get them to realize that we’re not here to hurt them,” Palazzo said. “We’re here to help them. And we tell them every day that they’re safe now.”

The animals’ personalities have started to emerge. Zoey has proven to be affectionate and playful in nature, while Sweet Pea remains timid and hesitant. Both Boogie and Minnie have been slower to reveal themselves, but the staff looks forward to witnessing their continued development.

“Seeing horses in this condition and just having them be sent off to auction just because they’re not needed anymore, or they’re just so abused or neglected or anything like that, it’s pretty common, and it’s getting more and more common,” Poisson said, a note of anger in her voice.

Palazzo nodded in agreement and wiped away a tear.

“Unfortunately, they’re just another piece of farm equipment, so when they’re not needed anymore, they dump them,” Palazzo said. “That’s how they end up like they were, about to go to slaughter.”

Palazzo never wants the horses to know fear and uncertainty again. They will remain on the farm for the next few months to heal and be trained by the team. Then, depending on whether they prove to be lesson horses or better-suited for another purpose, Palazzo will decide whether to keep them at the stables or find a new home. She and Poisson, however, have already decided that Zoey will be their shared horse.

The stables that Palazzo and her family built in 2020 initiated the process of forming a nonprofit to continue rescuing horses, specifically Morgans and Saddlebreds – the two breeds of Minnie, Boogie, Zoey, and Sweet Pea. The core tenets of the new organization will be “rescue, rehabilitate, rehome.” Eventually, they also hope to offer a therapeutic riding program. Currently, the stables holds dozens of lessons for children each week.

For Palazzo, having her children grow up in such a communal, loving, horse-focused environment is a priceless experience. Her daughter Addie agrees.

“My favorite part is the horses and how we all love on the horses and how it’s just a community with us and these horses,” she said. “Since the day we found them, we’ve loved them.”

Palazzo still gets emotional thinking about the journey that brought Minnie, Boogie, Sweet Pea, and Zoey to their new home. She views the rescue mission and subsequent rehabilitation as her way of giving back to the horses, whom she loves already.

“We said multiple times on the way home, ‘We just saved all these babies,’ she said. “It was heart-fulfilling.”

Rachel Wachman can be reached at rwachman@cmonitor.com.